Hello Calm! Thanks for your feedback! It's always nice to hear from someone who enjoyed our games 
Just quickly, since we're in the middle of doing a deadline right now:
4. We have production overflow now, so that is one thing. There is still a cost associated with max army size though, you can only bring a finite number of units into a battle, so massing pikemen had that issue as well. I share your disappointment really, pikemen never really lived up to their potential really (with the exception of Goblin Butchers and Warlord phalanxes)
5. What you're describing is how the system used to work, and what we discovered was that players found it very hard to compare stat bonuses to other things (like extra abilities, or passive conditional bonuses) and what tended to happen was that players would just go for the stat bonuses because they were easier to understand, and also more reliable. Doing 20% more damage is always useful, while lifestealing or paralyzing biological units is only useful under certain circumstances.
This also made the mod system feel boring, because people would feel obliged to take boring stat bonuses at the expense of more interesting ones. So the hope is that by merging the boring things (like +2 armor) with the interesting things, the whole system becomes more interesting and fun to use.
Just quickly, since we're in the middle of doing a deadline right now:
4. We have production overflow now, so that is one thing. There is still a cost associated with max army size though, you can only bring a finite number of units into a battle, so massing pikemen had that issue as well. I share your disappointment really, pikemen never really lived up to their potential really (with the exception of Goblin Butchers and Warlord phalanxes)
5. What you're describing is how the system used to work, and what we discovered was that players found it very hard to compare stat bonuses to other things (like extra abilities, or passive conditional bonuses) and what tended to happen was that players would just go for the stat bonuses because they were easier to understand, and also more reliable. Doing 20% more damage is always useful, while lifestealing or paralyzing biological units is only useful under certain circumstances.
This also made the mod system feel boring, because people would feel obliged to take boring stat bonuses at the expense of more interesting ones. So the hope is that by merging the boring things (like +2 armor) with the interesting things, the whole system becomes more interesting and fun to use.